In a time when personal computers Opens a new window with limited disk space were seeing a sharp rise in use, the ability to conserve space with a free compressed file format was big. And boom: Your file has been compressed. Suppose we wanted to compress this sentence: “Spiceworks is a community full of SpiceHeads helping other SpiceHeads SpiceHeads helping other SpiceHeads is the point of the Spiceworks Community.” The directory would give each word a number – for instance, SpiceHeads would receive number one – and then, for each repeating word, a single number would indicate two different spots in a sentence where the same word would go. ZIP folders included a directory file that played the role of a cryptographer's code book, holding the information necessary to render the compressed files.Īn easy way to understand how ZIP compression works Opens a new window is by analogy. The ZIP compression system was (and is) able to archive files in a folder by means of a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check ( CRC Opens a new window) algorithm to compress file sizes. Katz's new file compression system was more than a variant on ARC. In a time when personal computers with limited disk space were seeing a sharp rise in use, the ability to conserve space with a free compressed file format was big. He would write the same program several different ways, test the results of each, and then pick a winner. He had cut his teeth as a programmer at Allen-Bradley and had developed a reputation for being able to optimize code. As a 24-year-old programmer, Katz had just started a new job at the Milwaukee-based software company Graysoft. "How could I," he wondered, "make this better?" As he looked at the source code for ARC, Katz was enthralled. As Phil Katz scrolled through files on a bulletin board system in 1986, he came across something interesting: System Enhancement Associates (SEA) had released the source code for its proprietary file compression system ARC Opens a new window. He was 37 years old and, just 12 years before, he had developed something called the. His obituary Opens a new window would describe him as completely and utterly alone, "estranged long ago from his family and a virtual stranger to the employees of his own company." He sat, bent across a bedside nightstand, a Gideon Bible in the drawer beneath him while his arms cradled an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.Ī coroner's report would conclude that the cause of death was acute pancreatic bleeding due to chronic alcoholism. On April 14, 2000, a man named Phillip Katz was found dead in a hotel room.
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